International Energy Agency foresees an energy-independent US within 10 years

If the IEA is right, by 2020, we'll produce more oil than Saudi Arabia.

Each year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) prepares a World Energy Outlook report that peeks ahead to 2035. The organization tries to predict the trends in energy generation and use that will get us there. The reports are a mix of extrapolating current trends and predicting future ones. Although they often miss the mark, they also often provide a provocative look at the big picture of the energy economy, pointing out things that can be easy to miss when the focus tends to be on the day-to-day fluctuations in prices.

This year's was no exception. One of the key conclusions is that the US could reach energy self-sufficiency by 2020. That doesn't mean we'll stop importing oil; rather, we'll be exporting so much coal and natural gas that it will offset our oil imports. Those imports will also be kept in check by a combination of increased fuel efficiency and expanded extraction within the US.

The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

But that addiction is being fed by a technology the IEA didn't see coming in earlier years: the fracking techniques that open up underground deposits where rocks had previously trapped hydrocarbons. Fracking has dramatically lowered the cost of energy in the US and has started to displace enough coal for power generation that the US is exporting its excess (primarily to Europe). Longer term, the IEA expects the US will become a net exporter of natural gas as well.

But the surprise in this report comes in terms of oil, where the IEA expects fracking techniques will trigger a similar revolution of such scale that the US will produce more oil than Saudi Arabia by 2020. Combined with the Canadian oil sands and traditional sources of oil, this boom will make North America a net exporter of oil by the 2030s. That boom in production will come at a time where fuel economy standards for vehicles will start to have a serious impact on the US's gasoline use, helping to push the country toward a net energy independence.

(The other big story in oil is that Iraq will likely return to its status as a major producer, displacing Russia as the second largest exporter. The country will also ship its oil to Asia, since North America won't need it.)

They key role of energy efficiency in driving the US trends in oil use isn't happening more widely, and the IEA can barely contain its disappointment. It estimates that 80 percent of the efficiency allowed by current technology is untapped in the building sector, and another 50 percent in industry. Full adoption of known efficiency measures would allow oil demand to peak in 2020 and decline by over a Russia's worth of crude by 2035. Carbon dioxide emissions would follow a similar trajectory. More generally, we could save a fifth of our current global energy demand by that year at a cost of $11.8 trillion, and the savings would easily offset the expense.

The other big trend will be the continued growth of renewable energy. Collectively, these technologies (which include things like hydropower and biomass) are on track to become the second largest source of energy generation as early as 2015, and will be close to displacing coal as the top source by 2035.

In terms of other energy sources, the IEA recognizes that nuclear has an uncertain future in the wake of Fukushima. Coal's future will depend in part on how seriously we take carbon emissions. Its continued use will likely require us to eventually adopt carbon capture and storage on a wide scale if we're to limit climate change to 2°C.

Is there anything on the horizon that could confound all of these predictions? The report points out that just about every form of energy extraction or generation requires water: biofuels and hydropower among the renewables, nuclear and coal in generation, and fracking for oil and gas (oil sand extraction is also water intensive). Water is a scarce resource in many areas of the globe, and there are many other needs competing for its use. Future projects that aren't wind or solar may find their viability threatened by factors that have little to do with the energy economy.

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The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

Stuff like this is infuriating. Free markets aren't everything, but they do work really well so I wish we'd be a little more serious about trying them out rather then burning hundreds of billions in tax payer money into the air. We'd end up richer and maybe a little greener.

Actually pretty awesome. And completely plays to the strength of parts of the US.

Let's take fracking. In Europe there is a never ending whining moaning and bitching about the possible environmental problems. Not because of any concrete ones but because of the remote possibility that there could be some. Because many parts of Europe are simply ossified. Try to promote something new that isn't in the mainstream opinion and you have no chance of surviving. Pretty much the full public opinion paints it as if there was not a shadow of a doubt of the TERRIBLE environmental problems that means. Without any reference to scientific studies or concrete instances of pollution of course.

As if coal power plants or gas plants driven with Russian gas were so envionmentally friendly or politically stable.

The States can still create an energy revolution, not sure how much this will add to the GDP and remove from imports but it will be hundreds of billions of dollars.

But public opinion can be weird. I currently see Germany a lot in Northern America in the liberal news, as the promised energy land that knows how to change the energy mix through significant rebates on Wind and Solar. Problem is if you are in Germany you currently mostly have electricity prices going through the roof and politicians trying to curb the amoung of wind and solar coming online (since they promised them a very high fixed price for their electricity) Not that Wind and Solar are bad but they require a lot of backend infrastructure that also needs to be accounted for as well and you need to be willing to stomach the higher prices. Because whatever greens are telling you, they are NOT cheaper than coal, gas or nuclear.

"The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before."

Thanks for a better overview than the crappy cnn.com, which failed to mention this.

I'm shocked to hear that the USA is shipping coal to Europe. Not sure if Europe is that desperate for coal, the USA has a lot of excess due to shuttering plants, or both.

One take-away from this report is that the COMBINATION of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and new drilling is moving the USA to energy independence.

Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars."

I have to question this right here. mainly because I hear this claim being made by ignorant environmentalists here in the US but they never explain what they mean. There are no subsidies for oil in the US. they take advantage of the same tax breaks given to ALL businesses.

The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

Stuff like this is infuriating. Free markets aren't everything, but they do work really well so I wish we'd be a little more serious about trying them out rather then burning hundreds of billions in tax payer money into the air. We'd end up richer and maybe a little greener.

Dude, you need to stop and ask one important question. What is their definition of a subsidy?

Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

And I would REALLY like to know where these numbers come from. In Germany for example billions were paid to coal miners. But not to get cheap coal electricity but to keep the jobs of these miners. You could have gotten the coal cheaper from Australia or Brazil. So no this is not a subsidy for fossil fuel.

Likewise tax rebates to American oil companies are no subsidies, ALL companies who do R&D and investment in the US get them. The only reason the numbers are smaller than for wind or solar are that those are so much smaller.

And so on and so forth. I am pretty sure the only valid subsidies left standing in the end are ones for nuclear power in the 70s and 80s, But now that the plants have been written off they are simply very very cheap electricity and its stupid to shut them off early as has been done in Germany. Its simply a waste of money and public ressources. Essentially we all pay for that.

The simple fact that German electricity prices pretty much rise in lockstep with the percentage of renewables in the system should put the lie to all those idiots.

And I am not saying that Wind and solar are bad, you should definitely have them in the energy mix. And global warming is real and you should put a tax on carbon. All agreed but please don't support this with bullshit economics like the one above.

I predict they will collapse just like the Euro is expected to thanks to the coming world depression which will hit Asian nations harder since they depend on money from developed nations which will be forced to stop spending. The future of the Yuan isn't too bright. the world is going to go through a very painful change.

"The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before."

Why compare the entire world's subsidies in a report about the US? Perhaps the correlation doesn't look as good in the USA where there could be a much larger subsidy for renewable energies than many other countries?

Even using the entire globe, how about look at how efficient the subsidies are? What is the subsidy per kwh for each category? I'm thinking fossil fuels produce more than six times the amount of energy renewable sources do.

The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

Stuff like this is infuriating. Free markets aren't everything, but they do work really well so I wish we'd be a little more serious about trying them out rather then burning hundreds of billions in tax payer money into the air. We'd end up richer and maybe a little greener.

Oil subsidies = 4.5 billion in 2010.1.7 billion of that was tax deductions available to every manufacturing company in the US (IRS section 199).1 billion of that was the Strategic Oil Reserve.1 billion of that was the Farm Fuel tax credit.570 million of that was the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Now I agree that the 4.5 billion is a subsidy, but I think some context is helpful. We're not making payments to oil companies out of the general fund, nor are we giving them special treatment because they're all cronies with the politicians.

Let's take fracking. In Europe there is a never ending whining moaning and bitching about the possible environmental problems. Not because of any concrete ones but because of the remote possibility that there could be some. Because many parts of Europe are simply ossified. Try to promote something new that isn't in the mainstream opinion and you have no chance of surviving. Pretty much the full public opinion paints it as if there was not a shadow of a doubt of the TERRIBLE environmental problems that means. Without any reference to scientific studies or concrete instances of pollution of course.

Would you like to come see some concrete pollution from fracking? I'll happily show anybody who cares to come to the Barnett Shale. There are also other effects from overuse of water in an already arid area, the constant truck traffic that destoys roads, and the reinjection of used water into dead wells.

This report extrapolates based on recent trends in oil and gas exploration, taking 4-5 years worth of data and extrapolating decades into the future. The current trends in gas production are not sustainable - at $3/MMBTU, companies are failing to recover their costs (fracking is expensive). There's definitely been a long term shift in domestic fossil energy production, but over a decade timescale it's going to smooth out and not be nearly as significant as these projections suggest.

Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars."

I have to question this right here. mainly because I hear this claim being made by ignorant environmentalists here in the US but they never explain what they mean. There are no subsidies for oil in the US. they take advantage of the same tax breaks given to ALL businesses.

Actually, there are several oil and gas subsidies in the US. They can technically be seen as general tax credits, but they are tax credits that effectively only apply to the oil and gas industries.

Let's take fracking. In Europe there is a never ending whining moaning and bitching about the possible environmental problems. Not because of any concrete ones but because of the remote possibility that there could be some. Because many parts of Europe are simply ossified. Try to promote something new that isn't in the mainstream opinion and you have no chance of surviving. Pretty much the full public opinion paints it as if there was not a shadow of a doubt of the TERRIBLE environmental problems that means. Without any reference to scientific studies or concrete instances of pollution of course.

Would you like to come see some concrete pollution from fracking? I'll happily show anybody who cares to come to the Barnett Shale. There are also other effects from overuse of water in an already arid area, the constant truck traffic that destoys roads, and the reinjection of used water into dead wells.

With the water issue I don't get why we haven't started building desalinization plants to reduce the stress being put on our rivers and streams. It's sad when you actually get to go and see the very real impact we are having on them. So much money has been pissed away on bribing the constituents of various states instead of spending on important things like our infrastructure, power grid, and how we get clear potable water to communities.

If the subsidies for fossil fuels are eliminated, I would expect that consumers would just pay higher end use prices. The major producers aren't going to tolerate reduced profits.

It's a moot point though. The lobby for fossil fuels will ensure that government subsidies stay around for a long time.

Can you tell us what these subsidies are? Some examples would be nice. and yeah we would pay whatever price we had to since fossil fuels re the only real game in town. There is nothing else we can switch to plus the cost of switching over to one if he had one would be prohibitively high. We are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Any move away from them would have to be slow and gradual.

This report extrapolates based on recent trends in oil and gas exploration, taking 4-5 years worth of data and extrapolating decades into the future. The current trends in gas production are not sustainable - at $3/MMBTU, companies are failing to recover their costs (fracking is expensive). There's definitely been a long term shift in domestic fossil energy production, but over a decade timescale it's going to smooth out and not be nearly as significant as these projections suggest.

I agree with your assertion that the last 5 years will not accurately represent the future, but I'm of the opinion that rising global energy prices will result in the same outcome of a much more energy-independent US - just not at the low prices that are being extrapolated.

Let's take fracking. In Europe there is a never ending whining moaning and bitching about the possible environmental problems. Not because of any concrete ones but because of the remote possibility that there could be some. Because many parts of Europe are simply ossified. Try to promote something new that isn't in the mainstream opinion and you have no chance of surviving. Pretty much the full public opinion paints it as if there was not a shadow of a doubt of the TERRIBLE environmental problems that means. Without any reference to scientific studies or concrete instances of pollution of course.

Would you like to come see some concrete pollution from fracking? I'll happily show anybody who cares to come to the Barnett Shale. There are also other effects from overuse of water in an already arid area, the constant truck traffic that destoys roads, and the reinjection of used water into dead wells.

I don't argue that its a completely clean process but its hundreds of billions of dollars. So you need to compare it to industries of similar size. Or compare it to the alternative use of coal which is really really bad for the environment, our lungs, and global warming. And all I have seen until now is that its pretty benign because the "chemicals" are much less dangerous than greens make them out to be and the shale fields are normally so deep and so secluded from the water that the danger is pretty slim. After all water plus fracking chemicals seem to be less dangerous than oil which stayed in these deposits safely for millions of years.

Truck traffic for example is a weak argument. Yes industries that are worth billions of dollars will result in traffic and used roads. Normally they also result in tax dollars which you can use to repair the roads. I think the biggest problem of fracking is that it has a huge impact on areas that are not used to this kind of activity, so you get a lot of people opposed to it. You should hear German farmers who suddenly have a 200m high white wind monolith in their pristine beautiful country side.

If the subsidies for fossil fuels are eliminated, I would expect that consumers would just pay higher end use prices. The major producers aren't going to tolerate reduced profits.

It's a moot point though. The lobby for fossil fuels will ensure that government subsidies stay around for a long time.

Can you tell us what these subsidies are? Some examples would be nice. and yeah we would pay whatever price we had to since fossil fuels re the only real game in town. There is nothing else we can switch to plus the cost of switching over to one if he had one would be prohibitively high. We are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Any move away from them would have to be slow and gradual.

Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars."

I have to question this right here. mainly because I hear this claim being made by ignorant environmentalists here in the US but they never explain what they mean. There are no subsidies for oil in the US. they take advantage of the same tax breaks given to ALL businesses.

Actually, there are several oil and gas subsidies in the US. They can technically be seen as general tax credits, but they are tax credits that effectively only apply to the oil and gas industries.

Did you bother reading your own link? Those are tax breaks given to ANY company. The oil companies aren't the only ones who take those breaks.

There are no "subsidies" for big oil in the US. Only regular tax breaks ANY business can take advantage of. There is NOTHING that can compete with fossil fuels. you only subsidize an industry you see as disadvantaged. That's NOT happening here in the US with big oil. On the other hand the "Green Energy" industry most certainly is getting subsidized.

The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

Stuff like this is infuriating. Free markets aren't everything, but they do work really well so I wish we'd be a little more serious about trying them out rather then burning hundreds of billions in tax payer money into the air. We'd end up richer and maybe a little greener.

Oil subsidies = 4.5 billion in 2010.1.7 billion of that was tax deductions available to every manufacturing company in the US (IRS section 199).1 billion of that was the Strategic Oil Reserve.1 billion of that was the Farm Fuel tax credit.570 million of that was the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Now I agree that the 4.5 billion is a subsidy, but I think some context is helpful. We're not making payments to oil companies out of the general fund, nor are we giving them special treatment because they're all cronies with the politicians.

edit: These are US oil subsidies.

Awesome exactly what is needed. And puts a big hole in the whole "fossile fuels are more heavily subsidised than renewable storyline"

- Standard R&D/manufacturing tax deductions are available to any company. So no competitive advantage for fossile. The only reason they have more money is that they are bigger and employ more people

- Strategic Oil reserve, do not get that as well, it doesn't really lower fossile energy prices. But the only one with some validity IMO

- Farm Fuel tax credit, should be revoked but a subsidy to farmers not giving fossile a competitive advantage.

- Low income housing, not fair as well, if houses were heated with renewables they would get the same subsidy.

So in the end the argument is mostly bullshit. Renewables are just expensive. And again that doesn't make them bad. But it doesn't help if you make up facts like the article does and later when renewables are implemented on a large scale like Germany electricity prices shoot up and people are pissed. (Like is happening in Germany) You cannot lie yourself into more wind power you need to make an honest assessment of the costs and benefits.

If the subsidies for fossil fuels are eliminated, I would expect that consumers would just pay higher end use prices. The major producers aren't going to tolerate reduced profits.

It's a moot point though. The lobby for fossil fuels will ensure that government subsidies stay around for a long time.

Can you tell us what these subsidies are? Some examples would be nice. and yeah we would pay whatever price we had to since fossil fuels re the only real game in town. There is nothing else we can switch to plus the cost of switching over to one if he had one would be prohibitively high. We are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Any move away from them would have to be slow and gradual.

I understand fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. That doesn't mean energy companies need the kind of financial help they get.

They don't get any "help" in the way you are implying. Oil companies, like all businesses, are rewarded for reinvesting in themselves and expanding. That's it. Why? It usually means MORE JOBS. There is no tax code which only the oil companies can take advantage of. None. You, like so many other people in the US, have fallen for politically motivated lies.

The overall conclusion of the report is that the world will remain addicted to fossil fuels for the indefinite future. This is in part because of subsidies. Around the globe, governments are subsidizing their use to the tune of over half a trillion dollars. That's over six times the subsidies given to renewable energy, and up 30 percent from the year before.

Once again no breakdown of alleged subsidies and how they allegedly differ from extractive industries in general, which have tax depletion allowances akin to depreciating equipment.

Awesome exactly what is needed. And puts a big hole in the whole "fossile fuels are more heavily subsidised than renewable storyline"

Well, it doesn't - at least not as the article defines it. While the US subsidies amount to about 4.5 billion, the article states that worldwide subsidies amount to almost 500 billion; we're just a drop in the bucket. There's a number of places like Nigeria and Iran who flat-out subsidize gasoline.

What it does show is that some of the political rhetoric about oil subsidies in the US is a bit hyperbolic.

Awesome exactly what is needed. And puts a big hole in the whole "fossile fuels are more heavily subsidised than renewable storyline"

Well, it doesn't - at least not as the article defines it. While the US subsidies amount to about 4.5 billion, the article states that worldwide subsidies amount to almost 500 million; we're just a drop in the bucket. There's a number of places like Nigeria and Iran who flat-out subsidize gasoline.

Did you notice how they don't name a single subsidy? That's because, at least in the US, they don't exist. I expected a bit more from Ars than the pushing of the same old lies.

If the subsidies for fossil fuels are eliminated, I would expect that consumers would just pay higher end use prices. The major producers aren't going to tolerate reduced profits.

It's a moot point though. The lobby for fossil fuels will ensure that government subsidies stay around for a long time.

Can you tell us what these subsidies are? Some examples would be nice. and yeah we would pay whatever price we had to since fossil fuels re the only real game in town. There is nothing else we can switch to plus the cost of switching over to one if he had one would be prohibitively high. We are stuck with fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. Any move away from them would have to be slow and gradual.

I understand fossil fuels aren't going anywhere. That doesn't mean energy companies need the kind of financial help they get.

They don't get any "help" in the way you are implying. Oil companies, like all businesses, are rewarded for reinvesting in themselves. That's it. there is no tax code which only the oil companies can take advantage of. None. You, like so many other people in the US, have fallen for politically motivated lies.

Right... rewarded for reinvesting in themselves. When I see Exxon Mobil earning $41 billion in profits in 2011, Chevron earning $26.9 billion, ConocoPhillips earning $12.4 billion, my first though is that these companies should be rewarded. Oil companies have a vested interest in sustaining themselves (and their profits), they don't need any "rewards" through tax breaks. The world is already on the hook for fossil fuels... there's no way to get away from using them. The global economy literally runs on these companies' products. So why reward them at all?

And if you bothered to read the article on the US fossil fuel subsidies at the link I posted, you'd see that there are specific tax advantages for oil companies (state and federal).

I keep seeing this article with "energy-independent" in the headline, which just isn't true. In fact the article doesn't even use that phrase. We might become net exporters, but we'll still rely on oil from other countries, because all crude oil is not the same. Refining is a complex recipe to produce a lot of different products. It works with a wide range of different stocks, some of which aren't produced in the US. Undoubtedly the mix could be adjusted to produce most of the necessary products with only local crudes, but at a cost that the refiners can't absorb and that comsumers won't like.

Like Rydeck07 tried to point out with the OECD link, there are quite a few countries with straight-up diesel/gasoline consumption subsidies, keeping prices well below market levels. (Of course, this commonly creates the resource shortages that you'd expect after such a market intervention.)

Looking across the OECD map (http://www.iea.org/subsidy/index.html), which seems to show that at least 3 billion people live in counties with direct consumption subsidies, I can easily believe the global $500B figure, even with the US only contributing $1B.

Why compare the entire world's subsidies in a report about the US? Perhaps the correlation doesn't look as good in the USA where there could be a much larger subsidy for renewable energies than many other countries?

Read the article. The IEA report is the "World Energy Outlook". This article focuses on US-centric predictions but the report itself looks at the globe.

For those of you whinging in disbelief that fossil fuels are subsidised, also have a look at this National Geographic article: http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/n ... subsidies/. Fossil fuel subsidies are fairly often in the news; I can recall Nigeria and Indonesia being recently being noted, apparently in both cases the Government wanted to reduce subsidies but this was unpopular with parts of the population and there were protests.

Let's take fracking. In Europe there is a never ending whining moaning and bitching about the possible environmental problems. Not because of any concrete ones but because of the remote possibility that there could be some. Because many parts of Europe are simply ossified. Try to promote something new that isn't in the mainstream opinion and you have no chance of surviving. Pretty much the full public opinion paints it as if there was not a shadow of a doubt of the TERRIBLE environmental problems that means. Without any reference to scientific studies or concrete instances of pollution of course.

Would you like to come see some concrete pollution from fracking? I'll happily show anybody who cares to come to the Barnett Shale. There are also other effects from overuse of water in an already arid area, the constant truck traffic that destoys roads, and the reinjection of used water into dead wells.

With the water issue I don't get why we haven't started building desalinization plants to reduce the stress being put on our rivers and streams. It's sad when you actually get to go and see the very real impact we are having on them. So much money has been pissed away on bribing the constituents of various states instead of spending on important things like our infrastructure, power grid, and how we get clear potable water to communities.

We do not build desalination plants because they are not economically viable or scalable to the kind of volume needed to ptu a dent in the problem. Furthermore, they are extremely energy intensive, and energy production is already a highly water consumptive process. That negates the net benefit.

Desalination plants are one of the most expensive ways to produce potable water.

Awesome exactly what is needed. And puts a big hole in the whole "fossile fuels are more heavily subsidised than renewable storyline"

Well, it doesn't - at least not as the article defines it. While the US subsidies amount to about 4.5 billion, the article states that worldwide subsidies amount to almost 500 billion; we're just a drop in the bucket. There's a number of places like Nigeria and Iran who flat-out subsidize gasoline.

What it does show is that some of the political rhetoric about oil subsidies in the US is a bit hyperbolic.

True and these subsidies are insane and need to be removed. Mostly they are not pandering to the oil lobby of course but pandering to poor voters. (While the majority of benefits goes to the well-to-do) But I have no idea what they have to do the question if renewables would be cheaper or more expensive in countries like the USA or Europe.

These subsidies are simply totally irrelevant and the argument is clearly made under the guise of "Renewables would be cheaper than fossile fuel if it weren't for the darn oil lobby" Which is simply bullshit. Renewables are significantly more expensive. Doesn't mean we shouldn't use them, after all global warming is real and endangers our very existence. But let's please keep with the truths. Solar and Wind cost a shitload of money. Ask the German tax payer.

Those are tax breaks given to ANY company. The oil companies aren't the only ones who take those breaks.

There are no "subsidies" for big oil in the US. Only regular tax breaks ANY business can take advantage of.

That's a somewhat misleading way of minimizing the amount of public support to the oil industry. Oil companies receive massive tax credits partly because they spend massive amounts on their "R&D" which involves searching for and developing techniques for extracting oil from harder-to-access deposits.

But the reason that they can afford to spend so much in the first place is that they already are so huge; a current fact that has been fed partly through past and current subsidies, both at the production end and at the consumption end (i.e. governments, not end users, paying a large fraction the market price for oil - an extremely common practice in developing countries).

Renewable industries simply cannot leverage these tax breaks to the same extent because they simply do not have that kind of money to spend on R&D. This leaves these infant, competing technologies with a Catch 22 - to get a huge government donation, they need to get big enough to spend big on R&D. But without government donations, they cannot get big enough to spend big on R&D. This situation leaves them perpetually behind the established, polluting behemoths. The whole 'but everyone receives the same subsidy' ignores that this is both a fallacy and poor policy.

We do not build desalination plants because they are not economically viable or scalable to the kind of volume needed to ptu a dent in the problem. Furthermore, they are extremely energy intensive, and energy production is already a highly water consumptive process. That negates the net benefit.

Desalination plants are one of the most expensive ways to produce potable water.

Are you sure it isn't Big Water lobbying Congress for all these water pump subsidies?